oddhammer

This entry on HTML5 and Flash needs to be read, and read again.

I remember playing with Flash 3 and animating some simple shapes around. At the time I thought it was interesting, but there really wasn't much you could do other than animating. If you wanted to code complex things then you went with JavaScript.

I also remember playing with animation through JavaScript in Dreamweaver 3 (or 4?) over 10 years ago and marveling at how it would enable me to create animation directly through JavaScript without having to use the Flash Player. But reality set in and I realized that if I wanted to reach over 90% of the users out there I should just use the Flash Player because animating with JavaScript (at that time) was a nightmare with the different browsers.

Reality is beginning to creep back into the HTML5 vs. Flash discussion and it's becoming clear that we have a few more years before the real HTML5 revolution sets in. The question is, will the users and developers wait, or will Adobe fail where Macromedia didn't?

In a move that appears to be another step away from its Flash platform, Adobe has submitted the code for its Flash-based Flex framework to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) to be managed as an independent project.  more here

So I ran into a little trouble with an application I was working on in Flash and after some testing it looks like theres a limit on the length of a string of 64k. That’s a pretty big string, but there was a reason that I needed it to be bigger.. oh well.

 
That led me to test a few other things.  I found on this page a section on “Huge Scripts” about 3/4 of the way down the page.. where it says “it’s good practice to keep scripts smaller than 64k (compiled) per frame, it’s possible to get larger.”  So.. how much larger?  What’s the limit?  hehe..  So I created a little test SWF to see how much I could fit on one frame.  I created 5 strings, each 60k in length (that’s what?  a 16 page document for each string?) on the same frame and a text field for each one.  I published it as both Flash 5 and 6, and with fingers crossed pointed a browser at it.  It worked.  The text for all 5 strings showed up in the browser.  So..  I tried 20 strings that were each 20k.  That worked too.

  new updates to the Tri State Sculptors web site..  if you’re looking for sculpture, or need a sculptor to speak at your school..  go there..